This is the problem with the debate on nuclear power. Every scrap of information we receive comes from the mongers of doom. We read phrases such as ‘level 7 event’ and we’re scared, even though we don’t know what level 7 actually is. Nor do we know how nuclear power works.
We think there is some kind of rod made possibly from uranium. Or maybe plutonium and that it needs to be cooled somehow. It’s hard to be sure and there’s no point consulting the internet for more information because that has been hijacked by the disciples of Monsignor Bruce Kent.
I’m not a disciple of God Luddite. I get my opinions from a well of something called reason and it goes like this: we need to generate electricity and we can’t use coal and gas because we can chip and chisel and frack as much as we like but one day both will run out. And we can’t rely on new-age alternatives such as sunshine or wind because neither can produce anything like what we need. Which means if we want to drive electric cars and charge our phones and make tea, we must go nuclear. There is no alternative.
But, oh my God, there simply has to be an alternative to the way we go about delivering it …
Britain was the first country in the world to open a nuclear power station, but then we adopted the same philosophy that we saw with the Mini and the Land Rover and Concorde and the red phone box. We invent something … and then never develop it.
In 2006, however, Tony Blair decided to put that right. He declared nuclear power was ‘back on the agenda with a vengeance’. But there was a problem. There were no nuclear physicists in Britain. Not one.
So it was announced we were getting into bed with the French, who a year later said the people of Britain would be cooking their Christmas turkeys using lemon-fresh nuclear power by 2017.
In 2008 all was going well. Our French friends announced there would be four new plants in Britain, all of which would use the European pressurized reactor system. But then in 2010 disaster struck.
Engineers scouring one of the sites, at Hinkley Point, in Somerset, found a colony of badgers. They applied to Natural England for permission to move them and, having submitted detailed plans of how this might be done, the licence was granted. But that wasn’t good enough for a bunch of women who, in their heads, were still chained to the fence at Greenham Common. ‘This is how they’ll treat people,’ they wailed. ‘You’ll be tranquillized in the night and put in vans.’
So much time and effort was put into Badgergate that no one noticed another problem. We had the design for a new reactor. We had a badger-free site. We had government approval. But then someone looked in the bank and, uh-oh, there was no money to build anything.
While everyone sat around wondering what on earth they were going to do, the wave hit Fukushima and everything was halted while the design was analysed to make sure it was safe. Which, since Fukushima was a totally different design, is a bit like halting the production of Bedford vans because a Boeing 747 has crashed.
It was May 2011 before anyone realized the Bedford van is nothing like a Boeing 747 and there will never be a tsunami in Somerset. Which meant everyone could go back to scratching their heads about money.
Happily, Chris Huhne, then Energy Secretary, forgot that he’d once said the government must stop putting time, effort and subsidies into nuclear energy and decided to use cash earmarked for green projects to, er, subsidize the new power plants. Maybe his mind was on other things …
But whatever, with the subsidies in place, the French applied for planning permission. And as anyone who’s tried to build a conservatory knows, this is never easy. Indeed, owing to the rules on newts, bats and badgers, their application ran to 55,000 pages.
It was such a complex job that it was March 2013 before permission was granted. By which time the costs had run amok and more money was needed. Which meant that six months later the government agreed to pay Johnny French £92.50 for every megawatt-hour of power – twice what electricity normally cost at that time. And we’d be paying it for the next thirty-five years.
And it still wasn’t enough. By May last year all they’d built was a new roundabout. And now here we are, just twenty-five months away from when we were supposed to be cooking our turkeys with nuclear power, and still nothing is finalized. Even though the Chinese are now involved, the French are still doing that shruggy thing after they’ve been asked an awkward question such as ‘When?’
I’m not surprised, really, because the actual answer is that we can’t afford nuclear power. And we can’t afford not to have it either.
So here we are. It’s nearly ten years since Mr Blair said nuclear power was back with a vengeance and all we have to show for it is a new roundabout and a family of rather confused badgers.
8 November 2015
Labour’s little leftie does not deserve the abuse. But I know a man who does
After Labour lost the election and Ed Miliband went off to begin an exciting life of obscurity, the party needed candidates for a new leader and lined up a selection of milk bottles. There was a milk bottle in a suit called Andy and a milk bottle in a dress called Yvette and some other milk bottles whose names I can’t for the life of me remember.
And then someone thought, quite rightly, that party members should perhaps be given the opportunity to vote for someone who wasn’t a milk bottle. They wanted someone from the Industrial Revolution, someone from the past: a churn, perhaps, or a pail.
So they put forward a little beardy bloke from the hard left who didn’t sound or look anything like the other production-line politicians. And of course, against all the odds, the little beardy bloke won. It was a storyline that could easily become a Hollywood film.
Everyone was delighted. The huge number of young people who’d joined the party specifically so they could vote for the little beardy bloke danced in the streets with joy. I was delighted because his appointment would keep his party out of the hot seat for a few more years, and for much the same reason the City, businesses and ordinary ‘hard-working’ families up and down the country were delighted too. ‘Phew,’ we all said.
Since then, though, the little beardy bloke seems to have become the living embodiment of evil. Everything he says or does, or wears, is seen as yet more conclusive evidence that he is basically the Ebola virus on a bicycle.
Last weekend, at the wreath-laying events in Whitehall, he was the centre of attention. He’d said in the past that the whole Remembrance thing was ‘mawkish’, so everyone reckoned that he’d spoil the event somehow by staging some kind of potty sixth-form protest.
Many thought he’d wear a white poppy or turn up in a donkey jacket. Perhaps it would say ‘NUM’ on the back. Maybe he’d go the whole hog, rock up in cycling Lycra and then give a Black Power salute during the ‘Last Post’.
But no. He wore a normal suit and a sombre tie. He stepped forward properly and placed some correctly coloured poppies in the right place at the right time. Apart from the beard, he looked like all the other milk bottles who’d turned out on that unseasonably warm Sunday.
And for the young people who’d voted for him and who were undoubtedly hoping he’d goose the Queen and vomit on the Cenotaph, he’d prepared a clever little statement saying he was there to remember soldiers who’d fought for peace, and those who’d helped rebuild lives in countries such as Sierra Leone, and not just the gung-ho commando sergeants who’d stormed a Jerry machine-gun nest armed only with a teaspoon. So well done, little beardy bloke. You kept everyone happy on what is an important day.
Except he didn’t in fact keep everyone happy at all because, after he’d laid the wreath, many decided his bow wasn’t reverential enough.
The coverage of this slight was extraordinary. It’s yet another example of shoddy behaviour, everyone said, from a man who plainly hates his country. We were then reminded for the fortieth time of how he’d turned up at a Battle of Britain service with his top button undone and then not sung the national anthem.
And how, when he was supposed to be meeting the Queen, he’
d gone on a walking holiday in Scotland. Well, of course he had. He’s an anti-royalist. We know this. He loathes privilege. And it would be revoltingly hypocritical if, after spending a lifetime dissing Mrs Queen, he suddenly decided to put on a white tie and crawl about on his hands and knees in her presence.
It’s the same story with Remembrance Sunday. This is a man who’s deeply anti-war. He has said that he would never push the nuclear button, and it’s clear he’d still be trying to negotiate a peaceful settlement with ISIS even when he was dangling, naked and upside down, from some scaffolding in Trafalgar Square.
So he’s not like the milk bottles who turned up on Remembrance Sunday to pay their respects. They wanted to be there. He didn’t. He’d rather mourn all the cyclists who’ve been killed on the streets of his constituency. But he was there and he did what was necessary, which, in my book, is good manners.
Let me put it this way. How deeply do you think Mr Cameron would bow if he was asked to lay a wreath for all those who had fallen while fighting for workers’ rights?
I’m getting a bit bored with the endless criticism of Labour’s little beardy man. And embarrassed, actually. Because he seems a nice chap, and endless criticism of every single thing he does will be driving him mad with despair.
I don’t like that and think that if we want to bully someone, we should stick with his deputy, Tom Watson, who deserves everything you can throw at him, up to and including the tractor unit of a Scania lorry.
You can argue, of course, that Jeremy Corbyn wants to become the prime minister and that it’s only right and proper that the voters are aware of who he is and what he stands for. But we know that already. He’s from the loony left. He thinks everyone should be poor, ugly and on a bicycle.
The fact is, though, that because of all this and because of his beard, he is less likely to become prime minister than my dog. I think he knows that. I think he also knows he won’t even be given a shot at the top job because long before that happens the milk bottles will kick him out.
So I’m going to set an example here and try my hardest to leave him alone from now on. Easy though it may be – and fun – to kick him and tease him and bully him, I shall remember that he is keeping the red flag in a drawer for now and in future stick to abusing his ghastly little nasal sidekick Watson.
15 November 2015
The snooper’s charter is a danger to us all. A man in the pub told me
So you’re walking down the street one day when you encounter a young chap with a ready smile and a clipboard. He’s conducting a poll and, since you’re in no particular hurry, you readily agree to answer his questions.
Of course you do. It’s nice to be singled out and asked for your opinion. It makes you feel important. You may even find yourself standing a little taller as the question begins …
‘Does it worry you that deep packet inspection probes could soon be used when communications service providers refuse to submit data, even though it’s expected that most would maintain data about users in unencrypted form, from which contact information could readily be separated from content?’
At this point Captain Clipboard looks up and, with much gusto, says, ‘This, of course, would circumvent SSL encryption during transmission.’
So what’s your answer? Are you a) very worried about that, b) not worried in the slightest or c) unable to answer because you have absolutely no clue what he’s on about?
Well, you’re in a minority because, according to YouGov, which did a poll on this subject, a whopping 71 per cent of people in Britain are very unhappy about the prospect of these deep packet inspection probes snouting about in their ISP’s SSL – secure sockets layer – encryption programs.
This is because the actual question was more like: ‘Are you happy to let policemen rummage about in your emails and your internet browsing history?’ Put it like that, and everyone who’s had a peek at some online sapphic action is going to say: ‘Whoa, there. Just a cotton-picking minute …’
But now let’s translate it another way. ‘Would you like the police to be able to prevent some kind of terrorist atrocity on the streets of London?’
This not only exposes the big problem with opinion polls – you always get the answer you want – but also highlights the dilemma in the current ‘snooper’s charter’ debate about individual liberty and freedom and the Big Brother state.
On an individual level none of us wants our thoughts and our dreams and our sexual fantasies to be available to the forces of law and order. But we do want the security services to be able to access the electronic secrets of the weird-beard loner at No. 43.
I’ve been trying to work out where I stand on the issue, and it’s not easy because we simply don’t know what’s possible already. We hear from Tom Clancy and others of his ilk that if you use the word ‘bomb’ or ‘gun’ while on the phone, government-run tape recorders in limestone caves are automatically triggered and will record the rest of your conversation. But is this true? We have no idea.
We’re told that shadowy figures can work out exactly where we are on the planet because our mobile phones are trackable even when they’re turned off. But are they?
Likewise, we have learned by watching films and television that the security services run a fleet of geostationary satellites that can read the sell-by date on a strawberry-flavoured yoghurt. Is this for real? Again, we don’t know.
We do know the police can gain access to every text message you’ve sent – and possibly every email as well – within a certain time frame. But we don’t know what kind of permission they need to telephone Vodafone and say, ‘Hand over the info.’
We learned after the Russian airliner was brought down in Egypt recently that Western intelligence agencies were able retrospectively to identify chatter on social media that hinted at an attack. But were they? Or is that just a bit of PR to make us more inclined to support those deep packet inspection probes?
This murkiness is of course important. Because if we don’t know what our security services can do, then the terrorists don’t know either. That’s why it’s important to keep on filling the internet and the nation’s pubs with claims and counterclaims and conspiracy theories.
I sat next to a cyber-security expert at dinner the other night and he said that if you gave him a laptop and an aerial he could kill any diabetic with a hi-tech insulin pump in about twenty minutes. When I asked him about people with pacemakers, he said, ‘I wouldn’t even need the aerial.’
Is medical wi-fi security really that lax? I only have his word for it. It is said North Korean agents managed to hack into Sony’s emails. And they were using nothing but two beetroots and some coal. So what can the CIA do with all its cloak-and-dagger hi-tech wizardry? More? Who knows?
Did you know that you can switch someone’s phone on without them knowing? Well, you can. Apparently. You send it a text that turns on the microphone. So then you can listen to every word its owner is saying, even though the screen is dark and silent.
Certainly, it’s very easy to hack into an Android phone. Though when I say ‘certainly’, what I mean is ‘probably’. And before iPhone users get all smug, let’s not forget what happens when you put your nipples on iCloud. Next thing you know, they’re on YouPorn.
Time and again we are told that by far the safest way to hold a conversation in secret is while playing electronic games on a PlayStation. Do you believe that? Or is it a clever scheme dreamed up by Messrs Bond and Bourne to get disaffected Muslim youths to converse openly on a channel that appeals to them and that in actual fact is as secure as a piggy bank?
Which brings us back to the so-called snooper’s charter. It worries me, if I’m honest, because if the government sets out exactly what’s legal and what’s not, all the murkiness and subterfuge is gone. This means that Johnny Terrorist can work up a strategy that allows him to remain in the electronic shadows.
Far better, surely, to maintain the mystery. To keep him guessing. To force him to communic
ate with a pen and paper and a stamp.
Though there is even a danger there, because forcing him to return to the Stone Age is kind of what he wanted in the first place.
22 November 2015
Come on, Charles: put Frankenfish and bio bees in your world peace plan
Oh, how we laughed when Charlotte Church went on Question Time recently and told the audience of lunatics and lefties that the conflict in Syria was caused by global warming. But it turns out that she has a powerful ally – the future king of England.
Yup, Prince Charles will head to Paris tomorrow to tell a conference on climate change that the city was attacked recently because of your local pub’s patio heaters and that the Russian jet was brought down last Tuesday because so many people are now driving around in those Range Rover thingies.
Well, Your Royal Highness, I’ve done some checking and it turns out that the Su-24 was actually brought down by an AIM-120 Amraam missile fired from an F-16 Fighting Falcon aircraft. My Range Rover had nothing to do with it.
But let’s say for a moment that the powerful double act of Charles and Church is correct and that global warming is to blame. This of course means that we have to forget the problems caused by Winston Churchill drawing up borders in the Middle East with no regard for Sunni and Shi’ite sensibilities.
We must also forget the woeful idiocy of George Bush Sr, who went all weak-kneed in the first Gulf conflict, and the astounding stupidity of George Bush Jr and Mr Blair, who eventually did remove Saddam Hussein, even though they had no plan for any kind of replacement.
Other things we must forget are the rousing rhetoric of Western leaders, who a year ago were ready to support any group that wanted to overthrow Syria’s regime and who are now dead set on keeping Bashar al-Assad in the hot seat, and the tribal issues, which are as old as the hills.
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